Since you’ve made your way to Tribe in Transition, my guess is you’re someone who sees reality through the lens of a paradigm shift. And part of becoming skilled in paradigm shifting, is letting go of the old, making a space for the new, and then creating it.
In this spirit, Tribe in Transition is in the process of major renovations – I’m in the middle of creating a new programme on transforming grief and loss, the website is up for a complete make-over, and I’m polishing 13 years work on transition and transformation and getting ready to roll it out into the world.
Last week I felt I was walking through mud, part of me leaning forward to completion while my feet just couldn’t get any traction. I’m sure if you’re involved in your own passionate, new-culture-making project, you will have felt similarly stuck and bogged down at times. Even though my Big Why for doing what I’m doing is clear and good, the whole endeavour suddenly seemed absurdly ambitious and overwhelmingly futile and the threads I was holding felt like chaos in my hands.
And then something happened, don’t ask me how – sometimes the answers to questions come out of the blue – and suddenly I saw the complete picture, a whole new gestalt, a map of the way forward. It wasn’t an image but an inner shift, as if everything had just settled inside me into its true place. I realised I hadn’t been able to move forward confidently before, because I hadn’t had the whole picture. And now I can. Confidence, motivation and excitement returned, I’m off and running.
So, I’m thinking about this mysterious process of paradigm shifting and the co-creative dance between me and the something-bigger-than-me which is also part of the creative conversation. I’m sure if twelve of us were gathered together, we’d have twelve different versions of what a paradigm shift means. For me, one of the most exciting parts of my work is coming together with others in the kind of deep exploratory conversations in which new insights arise out of our collective energy and intelligence. This is one vital thread in the vision of Tribe in Transition and I’d like to kick off this conversation by telling you my definition of a paradigm shift.
The kind of ah-ha moment I described above is one sign that perception is shifting. I see it as an evolutionary process seeded by universal intelligence which causes a re-ordering of information, experience and perspective, so that perception falls into a more integrated and meaningful whole. This more holistic vision leads in turn to behavioural and cultural changes.
At this particular moment of our species history, many of us are awakening to new perspectives which are changing our understanding of power in our world, away from top- down, hierarchical domination and rational/materialistic scientific “fact” and towards an intuitive knowing of the interconnectedness of all life and quantum leaps. In moments of clarity, we suddenly know we are part of, and held by, an energetic, sentient intelligent web, which we
This same paradigm shift operates within the creative process of each of us. It’s one thing to understand the concept, it’s quite another to live this vision of interconnectedness and to embody the values of power-with, even within our own selves. And that’s part of the mission of Tribe in Transition too – to bring our knowledge down from the head, or up from the soul, into the heart, and to embody it and fully live it. As an educator, my work is to identify the kind of skills and support that will be helpful to this process. As an author, my job is to find the words to communicate this to you. And, as a healer, my task is to practice what I preach, and keep growing into my own wholeness.
In my lifetime I’ve witnessed countless experiments in living in a more conscious and holistic way, starting with the hippies in the 1960’s and proliferating through the women’s liberation movement, civil rights, the peace movement, the environmental green ecology movement, the anti-nuclear movement – so much movement – so many of us marching, sitting-in, speaking out, getting together for consciousness raising, experimenting with new ways to live and relate, building communities, creating projects, changing the world.
And with these many strands of evolutionary progress there has been a growing awareness that the changes we long to see in the world begin within the individual, with increased self-awareness, expanded consciousness, deepening wisdom and mindful behaviours. It’s been such a long journey and yet it often appears that the crises in our world are even more dire than they were before.
On one level, it’s so much easier now for we new-culture-makers to find each other through the internet. We can talk and spread ideas around the globe in an instant. And yet, in other ways, it doesn’t get easier, because an essential part of this process we’re in, is the necessity to keep stretching into the new, into the unknown. It’s a healing journey as well as a creative process. To create the new, we have to first clear out the old from our physical, emotional and mental bodies. On any normal day, we are operating on so many dimensions at once. The healing work draws us down deep into the inner world, and then back out to build and mend bridges in our relationships, and to express ourselves creatively.
What I’m noticing in my own creative process, as the new paradigm energy and information moves through me, is a shift away from linear goals and timelines and towards a more organic, intuitive weaving of the threads. Whilst a clear vision and strong intentions are still vitally important, it’s becoming more and more obvious to me that I am not in control of this process, that I am part of a much bigger unfolding that has its own organic rhythm and timing, like the opening of a flower.
It is possible now to create the conditions under which a rose, or a peony, or a lily, will flower in any season, but that same rose, peony, or lily still unfolds according to a rhythm and pattern held in its DNA. You can’t force the rose to bloom until it’s ready.
I am learning these days to be much more patient with myself and my creative process. When we engage with our soul work, it is a process that unfolds over a lifetime, in successive waves and in different forms. And this shift to a new paradigm culture can’t be hurried either. At the end of my last e-book, Sitting with Death and Choosing Life, I wrote:
“ This crucial shift in consciousness is a shift from hard work to creative play; from efforting to allowing and witnessing; from pursuing time-oriented goals to facilitating the emergence and unfolding of life. Some might call this a shift to a more feminine, intuitive, natural way of being. I believe this is the paradigm shift so many people are talking about now. The key is to trust and surrender to the intelligence of life, of which we are each a part. To move forward with grace, we need only align with what is true and co-operate skilfully with life’s intelligence. This is the process of transformation and how we can individually and collectively give birth to a whole new human and a whole new world.”
I’m practicing a new art I call “loafing with my soul”, or living every day as a holy, whole-y day. I’m here in a spectacularly beautiful spot in North Wales, with a 180° vista of the Snowdonia mountain ranges, where gentle lyrical hills reach towards upwardly aspiring mountains and curve around the blue sweep of Cardigan Bay. And although my life is mostly solitary, I always feel part of a universal conversation which speaks to me in many spontaneous ways – through books, or conversations on the internet, through mainstream news and the invisible channels of the sensate soul, always alive to information coming from the Earth, from the collective unconscious, the wide open spaces of cosmos.
So, when I feel my creative wheels flailing in the mud, I go outside and sniff the air or find a pool of sunshine to sit in. I say hello to the cat or make a juice. I lie under a big sky and watch the clouds. And I reaffirm my Big Why and my trust that the new paradigm is unfolding perfectly in its own time, and we, should we choose to accept the mission, are the servants and guardians of a sacred process.
How’s it going for you?
Rose Diamond, June 19th 2017
June 19th 2017
Beautiful words Rose. Thank you. so much to look forward to and work (loaf) towards 🙂