Seeds for a happy planet

again by Judy!

This afternoon was moving in and out of confusion and chaos.  I guess this is part of the process.  I felt we were really all coming from different places.  I could not discern a voice from the Middle.  I think we were not at all tuned into any collective knowing.  We were working with Action Learning, which is probably a very good tool, but not working well in this context.  We did not seem to converge on a question or have group buy-in to the process.   So we seemed to stop and start and restart.

All the while most present for me were the questions:

What is our Circle Task?
What if we are doing this FOR the world?

Many seemed to feel the question of how we were to make a difference in the world was too big.  Or that it was presumptuous to think we could really be much more than a ripple in a stream.  I was yearning to move into a deeper inquiry, a deeper space, into communion with a question, almost any question.  I know that from Moving the Edge last March I had worked through some of my uncertainty and fear with this process.  And yet it is still an edge.  After once touching into speaking from the Middle, I would forever want to return there, to that incredible and liberating power of knowing.  To that little worn groove in consciousness, that is now a bit more familiar.  The possibilities are so vast.  The opportunity to shift consciousness even in a small way is so attractive energetically.  It is as if consciousness is calling, magnetizing me and us to answer, to listen, to sense into, to be present, to co-sense, and to co-presence.  Once knowing this experience it becomes a capacity that must be utilized, that must be put into service.  The sense of urgency is compelling.

And then near the end of this long afternoon, Ria spoke as consciousness spoke through her.  I sat in silent support, holding the space, honoring her as the vessel.  Lisa captured her words; I was in stillness and awe of the clarity and presence of what emerged.  I defer here to Lisa’s rendering.  It was a huge shift for us.  We all knew it.

And then we moved easily and gently into dinner and a relaxing evening of conversation.  We glowed around the fire and admired the incredible pictures captured on Helen’s camera – colorful renderings of our faces, our hands, our time, and the beautiful setting that is the Heerlijckyt.

A Blessed day!

“ Under the chaos there is something beautiful cooking.” Silas

There seems to be magic at work in Kufunda that attracts people like a strong magnet and what made a lot happening in a short period of time. Many buildings arose: a classroom, two dormitories, a dining room and kitchen, a library, an office and many houses and compost toilets. All this in an area surrounded by poverty and in a country where prices have doubled each month lately. However, the magic is bigger than the physical alone! We can see and name some of its elements but magic is and always stays: magic!

It seems to me that underneath this magic is the belief that life is good and abundant. This belief in ‘the capitals’ – in what is inside us and all around us – translates in many forms. It is an appreciative way of looking at life itself.

Learning
What I see in these young people and what I hear from the stories is the deep practice of personal development. Learning by own choice; going from one job to another; the easy flow of learning in one field and teaching in another: all opportunities for becoming, for growing into full potential. The collective tools of meditation, sitting in circle, World Café and Open Space are practiced again and again. They are used in every meeting, for every topic you can think of.

Love
The practices of individual and collective hosting, the processes of learning bring them to a place of love. Conflicts and ‘bad’ stuff are not avoided, but taken into the circle with lots of courage and balanced with love. Love and sharing is promoted and there is a deep equality all over the palace that bridges cultures, ages and levels of education.

Community – relationships – interconnections
The diversity we meet is not at random but it is invited in. It keeps this living system vibrant with life. Relationships are build with four rural and one urban community, with many organizations and individuals in Zimbabwe and beyond.

Magic for the future
Kufunda and some other learning centers seem to create a new pathway for humanity. A pathway that doesn’t believe in poverty, but in sharing and in peace; a pathway of the heart, a pathway of old wisdom connected with new technologies, a pathway of individual and collective practice and learning. As all pathways newly formed, they only get visible and attractive when practiced a lot.
If humanity is one, if the morfogenetic fields are at work, then more magic is to come!

“A deeper tradition gets born where the wholeness of everything can be seen.” Phil Cass

In my search to understand what forces are driving our world and our evolution I recently had a very deep experience that seems to carry deep value for all who want a better world for all.

I was set up as a representative of communism in a constellation of a young Macedonian. His parents and grandparents were strongly affected by the arrival of communism in their country, in personal and financial ways. Systemic Constellation work is a methodology that has a deep simplicity and probably therefore can reach deep, hidden dynamics in human systems.

So there I stood in front of this family. The son, the mother and her lost dreams. As communism I was totally stiff, my legs very firm on the ground, and I felt like steel: very hard and not to be moved by anything or anybody. Not one tiny, little expression was possible in my body; my eyes were closed and wouldn’t open.
Whatever happened before my closed eyes was not at all affecting me, so I had time to become aware what was happening in myself. I was wondering that although I was really stiff allover my body I was breathing quiet deeply and I was wondering where this liveliness cam from. I daunted on me that it was the seed of solidarity that wanted to find it’s way into the world. It was a seed buried in humankind that was looking for a way to manifest itself; it came out of an evolutionary force.

As the constellation went on I got more and more stiff; my muscles were painful in my neck. At a certain point the parents of the young man were bowing to me, to the force that had influenced their life so hugely. After that the mother said to the son: “I shouldn’t do it (bowing), but it helps anyway.” That was the first thing that had some effect on me! A little softening, a little relief from the stiffness.
I kept sensing in my body, the stiffness was hard to bear, but one place in my body kept open: my sacrum. As if the seed of solidarity was born out of the sacred, out of Life, out of Evolution.
The son was unwilling to give in to his mother’s gesture and for the first time a thought arose about what happened before me: “You are stupid, you cannot deny this force of evolution!”

Suddenly I saw the bigger picture. I saw the seed of communism, which is solidarity; I saw the seed of capitalism: innovation and progress, and how evolution is searching its way to combine these two seeds. I clearly saw that before this can be possible, in order to find a way that they can manifest into humanity we have to bow to these forces of Life and what they did to so many people throughout history and right now.