Seeds for a happy planet

Since Moving the Edge in March 2006, David Reis and my self, had regular Skype conversations. They were always deep inspiring and gave us both an energising feeling. Today again, before the call, we wondered what we were going to talk about… this is what happened:

Silence – silence – silence …

Ria: Working yesterday on Women Moving the Edge. Reading Andrew Cohen’s “liberation without a face”. He says: Real enlightenment means: gender doesn’t matter any more. Thinking of our idea last time of doing a Couples workshop. What does Andrew’s concept mean in daily life? It is a big jump from daily life.

David: It’ true; it is a big jump. Only a few will make the jump. I wonder if Andrew is in the masculine perspective of enlightenment. The spiritual teacher of my wife is very aware of men and women’s difference. He and his partner, a remarkable woman, they have been exploring this a lot. I wonder if Andrew is right. Anyway: there need to be some bridges and we need to meet where people are.
* Last gathering in my spiritual community went very well. Description of the context we are in: different than before. Organization changed, the leadership changed; my position is changed and will finish in Sept. The rise of the feminine was mentioned in the previous years, but now was the first time that we really looked at it. Before, it was ignored.
* Creation works on the principle of sexuality. When we looked at it: the feminine can only show up when there is a safe place. Gender is not the main issue here. The masculine is the embodiment of love: designed to create a safe space for the feminine; that’s the partnership. It allows forms of live to appear. In the Tao: first the one, then the two; then you have the three; then the ten thousand things. The feminine and the masculine are both part of the One. Each dynamic carries a different quality, aspect of the One.
The feminine and the masculine are expressions of the One; all other forms are then the three.
* In the gathering: it was liberating for the women; also for the men: getting rid of the mistrust! Now: space for the trust. In one of the groups, equally balanced by gender, many times different women would bring forth a strong intuition – like needing more art. Once I acknowledged the strong emotion in it. Then she talked about the importance of drawing, collages, dance, and music: that what cannot be said through words.

One of my women friends says: Talking is a masculine activity.

The fear is that the feminine will become dominant; which is not true. The feminine need to arise, because the conditions are right for it now. Right now the context is not safe for the feminine. The true masculine need to become forward; instead of the shadow of the masculine.

You said: “The feminine cannot come forward if it is not safe.” I’m wondering: If I am really centered in myself, do I need the men/masculine to hold the space?

You need to have the masculine in yourself. The nature of the masculine is to create space, to create borders; to set the quality. Something glimpses here…. the field in which the masculine can be present is in the womb of the world… difficult to talk about… the feminine is also there… a perspective of 100% masculine and 100% feminine… as a gliding scale… nothing is totally 100% … they overlap always… we all have both… if the masculine and the feminine is in the One, then everybody has both in them! That is why the man can create a context, like a womb! Looking at the dynamic of thinking, women were designed to … to inseminate men with a seed of thought. They are catalysing a topic or a tread of thinking, for further insemination. In plants, in weed seed, masculine… and feminine…

One of the basic ideas from Macro-biotics is: If the form is feminine, the core is masculine energy; and vice versa. It is in everything. When the form comes as masculine, the content is feminine. Best words here: Form and energy (not content).

In the thinking of our group: we talk about a unified body of people. Humanity is designed to be the Body of Love. Body=feminine, Love= masculine.
Masculine and feminine is in every holon. Humanity, as being receptive to Love/Life, is feminine.
* In the gathering the women were visibly relaxed. They said: “We were able to bring the Earth in.”; which never happened before. Before it was all about Spirit; and frustrating the natural flow.
* Basic is: Honor the process of emergence. It opens up different ways that women and men can show up in the gathering. One man talked about a ‘spiritual oasis’; that the group can be like that. Not an organizational function, but embodying the Truth of Love. Being an oasis in the desert of the culture. Giving room for emergence instead of designing the focus beforehand. The role of Leadership changes: it is acknowledging what is emerging: what is emerging in form and what is emerging in spirit. What are the essences that are crossing over … for that to happen everybody is responsible for spirit, for listening for what is in the middle. That’s the key: everybody is responsible for doing that! Everybody is a leader! It shifts from leader-follower, to all leaders following the movement in spirit.

I like to call this Collective leadership.

In our group the son of the initiator started the collect. Leadership, but shadow elements came out.

What I hear is that your group becomes adult now. When the initiator starts a movement like that, all the other ones start as being a child, regarding this spiritual focus of course. Then everyone in the movement has to grow up. In the teen-age years, fights start. You can see the development in a many-years-perspective.

As that happens (the movement becomes adult), the old form passes away. When maturity happens, new patterns of relationships happen. It shifts into trust and each one will embody what is theirs to do. Then the role of leadership also changes: from giving direction and instruction to coordination.

Not just coordination. It is about holding the field … and more… It’s not giving directions or directives, but somehow holding direction; becoming more mature maybe. It is like when you raise your children. When they are 6 or 8 you give directives. When they are 16 or 18 you hold direction.

Yes, I actively look for direction! Looking into what is in the midst; and what people are saying. Then looking for the connection and speaking it as it develops.

Maybe we are growing mature as human beings, instead of quarrelling all over the place.
* Back to Women Moving the Edge. Our conversation confirms what I have been holding. What you spoke about the woman speaking about art, music, etc. In MtE in March, I was holding that perspective. Somehow it got some form – through one of the women participants, but not enough.
* The other point: for women to step out into the world with real feminine qualities, they need to master their masculine qualities also. Like knowing their boundaries, where to do it and where not to do it. Being able to create their own safe space. In a way: being in control of yourself of your own re-actions: as compared to being controlling. Able to MASTER your reactions, able to withhold reactions that go into fights. If you see it comes to fight, you just drop the line of conversation. And not being hurt by it! Many times when you go with the feminine quality in the world, many don’t see it, laugh or fight with it. However, you can outgrow being hurt by that.

It takes the women out of the role of the victim; and of the perpetrator!
If the women come out like this, the men have to relate differently. The men, who are less mature and are still treating women in these shadow ways, will have to come to terms with women who don’t fight. Surprising! Women in developing this masculine side, they don’t develop the shadow masculine side; which we see so much in business context.

David Deida says that the masculine at the core is: holding consciousness and presence; the feminine at the core is embodying love.

We were both surprised and energized by this beautiful and inspiring dialogue! I hope you enjoy it too!

This was written on my flight back home, while the second Evolutionary Salon was in it’s last day.

Flying between Seattle and Atlanta, not even knowing for sure where I would find Atlanta on a map, I still feel the connection with the Evolutionary Salon gathering. I see a landscape full of snow, hills and threes, suddenly changing in what seems a dessert to me. I see the flowing and curved lines made by nature and the straight lines draw upon the landscape by humans. The straight lines reveal me that humans – of course also part of nature – try to be wiser than the rest of it. If water would flow in a straight line, it couldn’t feed so much land.

The flow and the staccato in the dance;
the feminine and the masculine searching for a synergy;
the balance between timeslots and really open space;
the tension between the purpose and building community …

I don’t think balance is what we need to search for, if it means a careful tended ‘position’. We need more of a dynamic, changing dance. Something that is beyond a combination of the opposites. I’m looking for a dynamic interplay, the wholeness in this all.

Do we need to deepen the purpose? Yes, of course.
Do we need to strengthen the community? Yes, of course.
As long as we see them separate, we didn’t learn much. As long as we don’t integrate this playful dance of energies in our individual selves we will struggle, we will stumble – together – to find process, form and practices that will guides us slowly into the dance.

The landscape beneath me is full of wide circles, all of the same size, within are square pieces of land. For irrigating the fields the circle shape seems to be more efficient…

My guess is that Life itself is this dance. If we live the purpose, engage our full heart, minds and bodies in it, then we are the community. If we engage fully in the community, with conversation, with dance and ritual, then the purpose will be fulfilled.

Is there more to say than just DO – BE – DO it?

What did I learn in the Salon?

I sense a connection with the energy field that is ‘underneath’ all the visible.
I was aware of the subtle dimensions underneath the conversations and actions that happened in the gross, manifest level.

I saw the coming into being of this community, how it developed itself from a field of possibilities to some kind of manifestation.

We all responded to the call, felt the push or pull from the field of possibility; it was Michael who gave it words and sent out the invitation. All our individual visions of what is possible, all our individual treads of silk spun between now and the future, came together.
It came into manifestation because we are willing to open our minds, we are willing to look into assumptions that we hold, we know that our point of view is only one part of reality.
We are willing to open our hearts and go beyond judgment.
We opened ourselves for a greater will, or the soul’s yearning to come through.

We are in a big experiment to weave our threads together until the fabric will be strong enough to include all areas of life. We will create together a fabric that doesn’t have a fixed shape or a fixed pattern. We will weave something really new, totally in line with the rest of nature. A fractal kind of human life, sustainable, playful, scaleable.

Silence is needed, not only to slow down, but to become aware of the subtle dimensions in all what we do or don’t do.
It is not only silence for our ears, but the stillness in our emotions, the stillness in our minds, the stillness in our bodies, so that we are on all levels the antennas for the subtle messages that aligns us even better with future possibilities.

Stillness is needed to be able to sense how we can dance together a new dance, a new creation.

How to give space for the dance that exist between us?

Mark Jones wrote: “I am exploring living into the construct that there are “sensing mechanisms and practices” at the Turquoise meme that are distinct from our apprehension of reality from the perspective of the Yellow, Green, and other memes.”
and: .
“The “psychic synchronicity | sensitivity” — sensing what is happening among and within those that we feel highly connected to — may be a Turquoise meme siddhi when invoked by intentional mindfulness.”

As far as I understand the Turquoise meme, it means that we experience reality as a whole; separation and fragmentation is gone; is left behind or better: is transcended. We still have our identity but our center of gravity is in the Whole.

Here we are, three women friends and myself, driving 2,5 hour to gather with other, unknown women to meet around the question: “What is the role of women in an evolutionary context?”