Since mid- January I’ve been offering introductory sessions for Tribe in Transition locally – here in Golden Bay, in Nelson, our nearest city and in Motueka – a town half way between the two. There have been people at those sessions ranging in age from early twenties to the eighties and even nineties and, since it’s summer here and travellers are on the move, they have come from many different countries.
I’ve been very excited by the way people are resonating with the idea that we are in transition to a new paradigm and to a new way of living together that embodies that new paradigm – and that’s what I’m going to be exploring here at this blog over the coming months.
Central to Tribe in Transition is holding a space for being in Deep Discovery Conversations.
I’m working on the premise that the wisdom, knowledge and solutions we need collectively to move forward into a bright and beautiful future, are here already within us. When we hold conversations from a state of presence, with an intention to go beyond what we already know and practice beginner’s mind then we can co-create together a fertile field of creative richness and possibility.
Teilhard de Chardin called this the “noosphere”, Barbara Marx Hubbard calls it “a collective field of resonance”, Peter Senge and colleagues call it “presencing” ; Tom Atlee calls it “co-intelligence” ; Lynne McTaggart calls it “The Field” ; Craig Hamilton calls it “we space” ; I call it the soul field.
I think Rumi had the idea many centuries ago when he wrote the lines:
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.”
One of the things I’ve noticed is that when people are in a process of deep discovery, and exploring beyond what they already know, into the unknown – they begin to search deeply for the best words to describe an experience which is beyond words. The wisdom that we are stalking, like a hunter or a fisherwoman, lies in the deep waters of the soul or out there in the beyond place of the not yet born. Catching it is like trying to catch the thread of a disappearing dream. This wisdom comes from the place where poetry lives – in deep mind. To stalk it requires the ability to be still and silent, aligned with and centred in the authentic self, open and receptive. This requires intention, willingness, commitment, practice, humility.
Here’s a piece Woods Elliott wrote in his lovely book, Dazzlephrenia: A Gallery of Thought on Consciousness, Awe for Mother Nature, and Wonderment over the Dazzling Cosmos
raising consciousness.. something worth the wait
It’s also like stalking. Think how long the heron can wait, still as a stick, for just the right moment to seize upon the fish. Or like surfing. You have to spend a lot of idle time out there, amongst the mounting waves and breakers, needing to be in just the right spot to take advantage of the very occasional big and perfect wave that comes along. You can’t surf a perfect wave if you’re not sitting on the board and intent on what the sea’s developing.
As the awakened spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle puts it: we need to learn how to become more fully “present” with the stillness of this world. The sages would agree you can’t rush forth towards enlightenment like a drunken fool nor wailing two year old. You have to wait and concentrate on waiting, very quietly, in utter stillness, wait with all your grace like a stalking heron, wait through all the hardship and pains of waiting, and when you get so good at it, it no longer even matters if the waiting ends, or better still, the waiting becomes joyful for its own sake, then and only then, when there’s no longer desire and craving, when the seeker no longer seeks..truth will be granted, what is sought will be found, and all the lights will come on in the darkness, the unknown will be known, and all the mysteries will be unveiled. As you can see, this is well worth waiting for.
When we sit down in peaceful spots of stillness and beauty,
away from noise and distraction,
close our eyes to shut down light and the brightness of ego
and stop our incessant thoughts and the what’s next of daily life,
take ten quieting breaths and relax into centeredness
and yield into beingness..
we can be transported into
the opening edge of the present moment
and become filled
with joy and a more cosmic consciousness.
When we do this, our sense of separation dissolves
and we can feel one with all life
and know deeply our ties to the cosmos.
For me, Deep Discovery Conversations have been one of life’s special blessings for many years. In the 80’s I trained and then worked as a Gestalt therapist and the basic practice of Gestalt is just this ability to be present and to allow the creative impulse to unfold through you. Later, I became very interested in group dialogue as conceived by David Bohm and I was thrilled to participate in two 8 day conversations along these lines. More recently, I participated for the best part of three years in a community of people exploring integral spirituality and the “we space”. Throughout all of this I have run my own group experiments, learning as I go what this new edge of collective consciousness is, and how to live there at first hand. In 2006 I met my soul friend Woods and we started our own practice of deep discovery conversations.
When you sign up for the Twenty First Century Nomad newsletter in the box on this page you will receive a selection of free written and audio resources; one of them is an audio entitled Rose and Woods Awakening in which we share some guidelines for how we conduct these conversations and then explore our own experience of the process of awakening.
Join us for Tribe in Transition and the Deep Discovery process.
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