Seeds for a happy planet

Some time ago I posted a question on my Facebook wall: “Sitting with this question: what makes witnessing so powerful? Is it because it links with our deepest soul?” A whole lot of answers came; and really nice ones.

The question had been fueled by recent experiences in some gatherings and learning events. In one we did a witnessing circle. It was a listening circle – instead of speaking when you had the talking piece, now you were the one to listen to the others who would share what they saw was your precious gift. To me, it was a very special moment and someone said: This is even beyond Appreciative Inquiry! It was special because we could all touch a layer that we normally don’t give words to. It was basically naming each other’s essence. I would say it was about and from the soul level. Also in the Axladitsa Immersion, a learning gathering around Living Wholeness this witnessing was very present throughout the gathering.

Here are some of the answers that came on my FB page:
“I have been sitting with this question as well Some words from Alan Watts made me wonder if that’s a possible answer!
“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.” ~ Alan Watts”

“Often I’m reminded that our anatomy doesn’t let us see our own beauty except in a mirror. We can do that for each other!”

“There is definitely something about being seen and heard – and maybe that is about the universe being seen and heard through each of us.”

“Mirror neurons?”

“Perhaps the gracefulness of not attempting to change but accepting something…”

“There’s also something about seeing and hearing ourselves within that process which makes it so potent for me too.”

“The Vedas talk about unmanifest Being splitting itself into Rishi, Devata and Chandas – the Knower, the Process of Knowing and the Known – in order that it might know itself. Witnessing is a practice of being consciously aware of all three to complete the trinity, rather than just focusing on the ‘Known’…”

Isn’t there a lot of wisdom in my friends? I really was surprised by the abundance of the answers, as this was more or less the first time I engaged myself in this way on Facebook!

The witnessing evoked in the Immersion the notion of Radical Amasement. To me, to be in a state of real witnessing, be it something in nature, an old tool or someone else, I become radical amased about the ingenuity of what is in front of me. The wonder of life, that explodes in these myriad of different forms, so many different ‘solutions’ to so many different ‘problems’… it is just awesome!

Then you realize it is not about solutions and problems, but it is about how life tries out each and every way to express the richness of itself. It seems always trying out what kind of life forms are life-bearing or life-affirming. It just goes on doing that; and it never stops. Still the big bang is happening all the time….

(This is the text of my recent Newsletter – with an addition by Ashley Cooper).
Last week I took a day off to go to the Belgian coast with a friend. Actually, we were lovers once upon a time. Probably you know the feeling of getting into ‘the old track of conflict’…

We had good conversations over lunch in Bruges, one of the most famous and picturesque cities in Belgium. We had walked on the boardwalk in the port of Ostend; I had taken a long walk on the beach while he took a nap. Now we found ourselves in a restaurant at the beach, eating fish.

He said something,
and I replied. No – I reacted.
Then he reacted.
And then I stopped.

I could feel it immediately! There was an emotional charge in my tone; I was out of my center and in a position of making sure my point came across. I stopped and asked if I had been harsh/hard on him. But I didn’t need to ask, I knew it already. My body had told me.

This to me is an example of embodiment of consciousness; a sensing so fine that it can distinguish the subtle differences between actions coming from ego or from our center. I see a rise in the importance of embodiment. Both in new, innovative ways like The 16 Ways of Dylan Newcomb, the fascinating world of Take Tina, and in my own co-hosted program of Women Moving the Edge. Also in the mastery of lineages that are applied to our current times, like the Conscious Embodiment of Wendy Palmer and the Warrior of the Heart; both sprouted from the old roots of Aikido.

You may wonder why this is important…
It is about being present,
Fully aware of what you radiate out to others,
Open to subtle sensing of yourself, the other and what is in between.
It is about knowing your inner ground,
And being able to return to it easily when you lose it.
It is about the capacity to act form your center,
When the world gets complex and chaotic.

It’s about being ready for the times ahead. Please don’t suspend till later.
These times are approaching rapidly.

Ashley responded: “on your embodiment poem, I played with it a little bit to reflect my own experience.” Here is her version:

Fully aware of what you radiate through your inner ground
and out to others
Open to subtle sensing of yourself, the other and what is in between.

And being able to return to your inner ground easily when you lose it.
It is about the capacity to act form your center,
When the world gets complex and chaotic.

Thanks Ashley!

Our third day in Women Moving the Edge was so inspiring and so full of aliveness! Already at the breakfast table were we talking about the question: What is the question that would inspire a new economic order? As it turned out later this would be one of the threads that would later lead to a systemic constellation.

The other thread was more about us, women, being earthy and sensual beings. Speaking about it, it would also trigger deeply held pain that was hidden in our bodies, all these long years! So again, there were tears and also shaking of the body, taking care of each other and then – relief! – and how much laughter was available next!

A few sentences I wrote down during this process…

Earthy and sensual topics make us alive!

Allow and breath!

It is so damn easy as to follow your passion!

Deep sadness in the belly to live from that place. Moving sadness into aliveness through the expression.

Living the Sacred, instead of the pure pleasure.

We ALL need to be alive!

Life is happening anyway, if we participate or not.

As we moved through these conversations it got more tangible what sourcing really is; how it is to speak from a place where no thoughts or concepts are formed yet; straight from the experience – as when we hurt ourselves and scream, but now having deep wisdom to share. Once again it showed me how our minimal structure of circle practice, holding space for the potential to manifest and having a guiding question is a profound container for letting life happen through us. Sooner or later it will bring the wisdom as answer to the question and the clarity of a next, minimal, elegant step. This one next step is the only thing that is possible after all in a complex and chaotic environment – very much where we live in these days.

The sourcing got us into a deeper insight of what ‘the shadow’ really means. We speak of holding the shadow and loving the dragons, but it became clear that to understand what this really is about we have to sink deeper into ‘the koan of the shadow’. The shadow is not what we think it is, the koan will help us see what it really is; because it is not dark and it is not a thing. It is like clouds casting a shadow, but the cloud isn’t something to touch or to hold, you can just walk through it! Instead of the shadow there is an Intense Beauty! Can we live in the Direct Light, not putting anything between our selves and the Light???

The souring, the sharing of the pain, playing the music without asking for permission, reading a poem for the first time, it all lead us to realize:

TO BE ALIVE IS TO BE ON THE EDGE, TOGETHER!

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.

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?

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???

Someone send me the link to this incredible video! It is one of the famous TED-talks, where you can find a lot of inspiration, and good presentations!
“Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.”

Poem From Women Moving the Edge, a string of sharings by all of us, noted down by Maria.

I realise that I touch people
I don’t have to be part
Of an ‘edgy’ organisation
I make a difference

Surrender, Surrender
To who we are
I have to get that, I am
Already doing it

I walked the woods backwards
Feeling the strength at my back
I walked it backwards twice!
And I did not fall

The simple and the explicit
The touching and being held
The simple gestures of touching
Connecting

The question is:
Is staying disconnected an option?
Because it is uncomfortable
For a few moments to connect?

I am not really ready to find anything
I am still in the inquiry
Still in a place of seeking

Why am I afraid?
Because women in my time
Were burning bras, hating men
I did not want to be part of this

Yes, it is about us being powerful
About us being out there
And touching men, touching women
Out there, in the space we want
To act upon

Have we lost something?
I know there is a deeper level
We do not have to drop it
We touched it and left, touched it and left

For me the real feminine is to
Stay in that connection all the time:
To stay present to your body and senses
To contain your attachments
To ego, or to whatever

We are just beginning to see
How much we are living in the masculine
- Not to say that we are doing a bad job -
Our track in consciousness of the masculine
Is so deep
The new track is hardly visible
And it needs all our consciousness
What is the subtle that calls my awareness?
Allowing the silence
So much noise
So many words

They will not heal us
Only when they are connected
We hardly touched what is
Connection to Source

So much to discover deep inside us
Inner wisdom, inner knowing
As Priestesses we need to bring it out
It is still there

The Feminine is about collectiveness
Holding the Whole
The only way we can nurture
Ourselves back to this
- Not just as feminists – is to come together
As women
It is needed, it is necessary
As far as I know
All Priestesses, all Witches
Have come together
In Circles to hold the Source

To get a physical experience
Of how it is to be in
Feminine Energy
We are overwhelmed with the masculine
How we work, our cities, our buildings

It is only fair to get a physical
Experience of the Feminine

We are more knowledgeable
About Zen
We need to be in experience
Be in the body
Be in the layers of the body
Then use our consciousness

Let the words come out
From the deep layers, not the minds
And the grandmothers sit around us
Three, four, five circles
Just lean back!
They hold us
Lean back!
Life is happening anyway
Just sense how it wants to be born
Which muscle you have to stretch or release
Evolution is happening anyway
Get out of the way
Rest in silence

I know that when I sit in circles like this
And this is not the first
Then when we are ready
Source vibrates out of the centre
It’s a resonance
I can move from it, speak from it, act from it
But unless I am open
And those that gather
Can contain resonance
It is lost
Until the presence is ready again

I have no doubt
That Source appears
When there are men and women
But there is a quality that emerges with women
Because Source is deeply feminine
There have been times throughout history
Delphi, Witches, 8 million women burned
Because they held power of self
They were connected to this
This was perceived as dangerous

There is a reverence to embodying
And the noise is so, it is everywhere
The static, the confusion
For me, I guess, in this moment
I am understanding the reason I came here
It is to reconnect to the brilliance that is
This energy called Source
To plug myself in again
And to witness others into that to

The other name of Source
Is Home
Not good enough to just know it exists
And feel it from time to time
We have to act from it
And invite it into places without question

I am feeling so much pain
In my body
Can we dance?

And we did!

Below is the prologue of a book called: Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview. It is written by Umeek, and the story is from his great-grantfather Keesta. ‘Heshook-ish tsawalk’ means: everything is one, a perspective that is inclusive of all reality, both physical and metaphysical. I referred to this story in a previous blog entry – as I recalled it – but here is the right version:

Every protocol had been observed between the whaling chief and the spirit of the whale. Keesta had thrown the harpoon, and the whale had accepted it, had grabbed and held onto the harpoon according to the agreement they had made through prayers and petitions. Harmony prevailed, whaler and whale were one, heshook-ish tsawalk.

All of a sudden something went wrong, some disharmony arose, some disunity intruded, and the whale turned and began to tow Keesta and his paddlers straight off shore. Keesta took inventory. Everyone in the whaling canoe remained true to the protocols:� cleansed, purified, and in harmony. Prayer songs intensified. Still, the great whale refused to turn toward the beach, heading straight off shore. Keesta and the paddlers had kept true to their agreements, and now there seemed nothing left to do except to cut the atlu, the rope attached to the whale.

Keesta took his knife, and as he moved to cut the rope, Ah-up-wha-eek (Wren in English; Winterkoninkje in Nederlands) landed on the whale and spoke to Keesta: “Tell the whale to go back to where it was harpooned.” Keesta spoke to the whale, and immediately the great whale turned accourding to the word of Wren, the little brown bird, and returned to where it was first harpooned, and there it died.

After the whale had been towed ashore, Keesta discovered, as he had suspected, that the disharmony and disunity had intruded at home. When his wife had heard that the whale had taken the harpoon, she had roused herself and prematurely broken away from her ritual in order to make welcome preparations. At the point when she began to go about her life in disharmony from the rest was exactly when the great whale had begun to tow Keesta and his paddlers off shore.

I was just reading an article from Anthony Judge, which gives the perfect words to what happened in our experience of Women Moving the Edge (read previous blog posts).

“For participants who have attended many meetings in different contexts, the ultimate expression of appreciation for a meeting is that “it was magical”. This tends to imply that somehow the right people said the right things at the right time, without any apparent form of orchestration. Together these contributions are then perceived to create what have been named “transformative moments” — when there was a genuine shift in the configuration of forces and insights.”

“Magic, like advertising and poetry, does not “work” because its propositions are essentially real or true; it works because practitioners become imaginatively involved in these propositions. Those affected can grow through the patterns, emerging beyond them into a clarity of awareness that was not possible before the experience of transition and transformation.”

These quotes are taken from an article “Cultivating the Songlines of the Noosphere. From presentations by representatives to embodying presence in transformation” on his website that gives like 10 or more perspectives to write or look at a gathering. Many times I find his articles way too abstract to be able to follow, but this is ‘just beautiful’. I got the link from another blog where was said: “a must read”.

Right!