Seeds for a happy planet

It is Saturday now, after our morning break, and the room is silent. Everybody is just doing what they are doing: resting, in various positions, or drawing in silence. Nobody told us to do so, we are true to ourselves, in this moment. This morning we, as the hosting team, gave all leadership back to the group as a whole. We are still holding space, but we are not providing the others with techniques or tools or…

Words appear on flipcharts: Radical Authenticity. Swiftness, Preciseness, Love. On another flipchart: Be this Body!

This morning we struggled our way away from talking and concepts to this space of collective presence: present to ourselves in this moment, in this body, now, together.

Yesterday, we decorated the room with our questions on flipcharts, the letters wrapped up in colors and drawings. I used yesterday evening these colors too when harvesting our collective wisdom. We started our gathering with a circle sharing our answers about: What is my individual edge now? Flowing into a World Café around the question: What do we hear through the individual stories about our collective edge here? This is my harvest from this conversation.

What happened, and the speed with which we got at this point of collective presence supported my sense that every gathering is contributing to a new groove in consciousness. And the more we go there, the easier it gets for the next ones to step into that path. This is exactly the purpose of doing this: to lay these tracks in a secure and precise way, sensing our way into it.

Sense and act, sense and act, sense and act…

This question just appeared on the wall: Is humanity ready for Crone’s wisdom? It is related to a sentence spoken before by someone else: Humanity is just growing up. It puts our experiences in the bigger picture of evolution.

During the break someone laid out a roll of paper on the ground, somehow representing a timeline from our ancestors, through us, to the future generations. It shows some words and sentences, some colors, some curly lines. Open to others to fill in, to add their colors, their words, their part.

Writing and sensing all this, the sentence comes to me:
We are doing/being the future now.
or even better,
We are living the future, now.

This is not a group of women ‘just doing their own thing’. The intention with which we are here – to move the edge of collective presence – makes all the difference in the world. We live in this paradox of ‘moving the edge’ and ‘being present in this moment’. To me we are learning to be present, and slowly move into presencing.

Here we are in the room in which the third Women Moving the Edge gathering will start, this afternoon at 3pm.

The three of us, Judy, Helen and myself are making the place into ours: beautifying it by putting flowers, arranging the chairs in a circle, adding colors and drawings to the flipcharts which hold our deep questions. We prepare it for whatever wants to happen: putting books out, and make pencils, pastels and paper available for everyone, installing the music system etc.

Being here and settle in ourselves is an important part of preparation, of building up the space, ‘the energetic container’ in which the whole gathering can unfold. Helen is still coloring some charts, Judy is looking through her journal, I am importing some music and writing this blog entry. It is so good when there is time to prepare in this way.

Yesterday we sat in circle almost whole day, going deeper and deeper in the conversation and the questions we are holding; trying to dig deep into the unknown. The innovation, the newness here, is that we also include the wisdom and information we get from our bodies. When it doesn’t feel right, then we are not there yet! We all have a sensing of cycles – like if we are done or not – we all have a sensing of what is natural, but we recognized how much we are dis-sociated from our bodies. We have lost this natural connection, and most of the time we live (only) in the world of concepts and ideas, shoulds and woulds, norms and so on.

Will we be able to come to this place of presence, where we can speak and act ‘in the moment’ where body and mind be/act/live together in the same instance? This is my big quest for this gathering: not only be able it to do it on my own, but do it all together. Can we inhabit the inter-subjective space in presence?

Another wonderful journey is to unfold!

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.

Recently I wrote some thoughts and experiences about the question I was holding for a long time: What am I doing when I am holding space?
Quickly it become a much deeper quest, involving the concepts of Spirit and Source. I’m trying here to uncover the core qualities and core functions of each in our daily life. More precise: to unearth what this could mean for the world that we all wish to come into manifestation.

This is not an easy task, as so many concepts and ideas in our language are made to separate. Using them to convey meaning about wholeness make me look for other – for myself more familiar – tools, like making drawings or reside in contemplation, but the level of share-ability is quite low here. So back to language and writing and making the best out of it.

I tend to see Spirit somewhere high out there and I experience Source as something deep within. Watch my words here: I see’ Spirit and I ‘experience’ Source. Maybe this is only valid for me, but other people tend to go with it. So, let’s stick to it for a while.

If we draw them on a blank sheet of paper, Spirit sits on top of it, and Source takes the bottom position. Then what is in the middle? I name it ‘the real world’; the world in space and time that we see as the manifested world with its three dimensions. Then draw a circle connecting Spirit and Source, because somewhere they are One. That is ever harder to express in words and I leave that to others. Remember: my inquiry is about understanding ‘holding space’.

For me Spirit and Source is like the first couple that came out of the One. The first paradox was created with them. Related are: light and darkness, yin and yang, inward and outward, masculine and feminine, …
But back to holding space, and more specific within the context of facilitating or hosting a group conversation. I wrote recently: “When I am holding space, I connect in my body with the unmanifest potential of this person, this group or this place. It asks for an emptiness and a deep stillness inside to be able to carry this potential. Maybe it is better to say to be a container for it, and I mean it in a very physical way. I open my body to be this container in service of something that wants or can become manifest.” In short: I hold the energy container in my body, in which the potential can unfold. But much like many failed experiments with non-authoritarian education, something is missing if we want to see the unfolding of the potential in ‘real’ time. Holding Space asks for its counterpart of keeping the intention or the focus. But this focus or intention can’t be closed or fixed, otherwise there is no room for unfolding. So I suggest to use ‘Stay in Inquiry’.

In my drawing I write now:  Stay in Inquiry below Spirit, and Holding Space above Source, and I connect them also with a circle.

Looks good, but I am not satisfied. The distance between the two circles is too big for me. How does Source becomes Holding Space? How does Spirit becomes Stay in Inquiry? What is Source providing when going in the direction of the real world? What is it’s first level of manifestation (that I can distinguish)?

When I put myself in the shoes of Source I experience unlimited Potential. That makes a lot of sense to me. What is then it’s counterpart on the side of Spirit? How shows Spirit itself to the real world? I am inclined to name that Inspiration. Now we can draw the third circle within the two previous ones.

For me it was highly revealing how this map – so far – fits together. Because later on I want to dive deeper into the lower part of these circles, which hasn’t been receiving much focus, as most of us pay attention to the real world and the real phenomena. But there is more!

The ancient and contemporary spirituality practices give you a quiet detailed map how to go on these different steps towards Spirit and up to Oneness. But my whole focus of exploring this is to get a sense of the lower part and its different steps, to finally see a more full picture. And we will see that it tells us more about the collective than the individual.

In trying to write this article I had to blend the two different energies also in myself. This is not a theoretical writing. I am somehow used to write ‘from inside’, to access my inner wisdom, through writing, regarding important questions and issues. This means that my mind doesn’t have ideas before the words come on the paper. But now, here, I want to convey some of its wisdom to you, to others. So there is now knowing in my memory, and still I want the freshness of accessing new inner wisdom too. Can I stay in touch with the inner wisdom and still write a coherent piece, understandable for people who want to?

It seems like mixing oil and water. Being an inward person, the integration needs to happen – first – in my body, in my energy. Writing from inner knowing has no time delay, I only know it when it is written down, not before. Writing from memory goes the other way round: first knowing, then writing. Difficult mix. But women are known for being good at multi-tasking, so there must be a way!

Since this summer I’m holding the question of: What is it exactly that I’m doing when I say that I am holding space?

Many in the Art of Hosting community, and other facilitators, nod their heads when we speak of holding space. They/we seem to understand, but I have never heard anybody explain it. Different experiences in the last months made me aware of some aspects, and I want to share them with you.

First there is the story as told by Chris Corrigan from a native Canadian tribe. In a little village fishermen set out to go on a whale hunt. It becomes a very difficult journey, as they first lose track of the whale and almost lose a man too. After many days, when they finally come back to the village the head of the tribe speaks to his wife and asks: “What have you been doing? We almost lost a man, and we lost the whale for some time too.” The woman answered that her attention was divided because one of the children had been very ill. This story touched me deeply, as I realized so few men – and women too – in our Western world understand what this man and woman saw as so obvious: that the women were doing something that was vital for the success of the hunting men. Their attention, their holding the space was needed for the whole journey to be successful.

Last summer I was with a dear friend on what he called a writing retreat. I expected to share breakfast and dinner together, while having inspiring and deep conversations, as we normally have. He would then dive into his writing and I would go and do my own thing: reading, exploring the neighborhood, enjoying the beautiful nature. Soon he would announce that his writing would be best supported by fasting and that he wouldn’t show up for breakfast, or for dinner. So, I went on doing my own thing, but missing the good conversation company I was wondering: What am I doing here? I still felt good about it, but why exactly was I here? I could read and explore nature anywhere. Holding this question for some time the answer came to me: I was holding space. There was relief in my body when I realized that. After the five days, as we were driving home, I told my friend about it, and I realized what an intimate thing it is to do; even more than having sex! This made me wonder…

A few weeks later in a conversation with another friend I told him that I was holding space for him and others while they are doing big strategic, systemic work in the world, which is not always easy. I told him too that this strategic work is not mine to do, but that nonetheless I have something to do with it: I am holding space for it. Tears welled up in my eyes while telling him! I realized that this holding space work is in need of language, of words and concepts that can make it more visible in the world. Another friend called it Grandmother’s Work.

Next came an experience within a Systemic Constellation training where I realised – through a difficult experience – that holding space, for me as a woman, was essentially something that I was doing in my body. Not in the mind. This realization was very grounding for me, as if finally I arrived at my right spot. It seemed that it was not just my personal experience, but many women were resonating with it.

But still: what am I doing when holding space within my body? I have known for a long time that my sensing of what would happen in a group’s process or in a systemic constellation, was not the same as people having visions of the future. Looking back at our experiences in the gathering Women Moving the Edge, it suddenly dawned on me that we never were speaking about Spirit, but we would always use the word Source. Why was this? Source would point to depth, to something deep inside; Spirit is more related to something high above… mmm… I started drawing and realized that Source can be seen as Unmanifested Potential.

Soon my answer to the question I was holding for many months became clearer. When I am holding space, I connect in my body with the unmanifest potential of this person, this group or this place. It asks for an emptiness and a deep stillness inside to be able to carry this potential. Maybe it is better to say to be a container for it, and I mean it in a very physical way. I open my body to be this container in service of something that wants or can become manifest.

This made a lot of sense when I spoke about it in Axladitsa, and explained that the callers of this Meaningful Place will always be and stay the ones who hold the deepest and widest container. They will always stay the callers and always form the core group. If they drop their energy the whole project will die. Others can become very active in this project, but when they leave, the project will go on. They are not in as deep a holding space.

In a sense women have a natural tendency to hold space for people, places and projects. But is has never been seen or realized or acknowledged, not even by themselves. It is time to change this, and this is my first contribution to it.